


a desert

by writedeku



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Happy Ending, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Metaphors and other Poetic Things, Mutual Pining, Slight Bittersweet Tang, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writedeku/pseuds/writedeku
Summary: Sometimes, Keith likes to touch the side of Lance’s face, trace the curve of his jaw to the swell of his lips, and drag his thumb across them. He never does anything more, never takes more than he thinks Lance offers, but if music is love, then there’s music in his touch.(In which Keith finds his emotions are overflowing and soaking his socks, and he realises he cannot quite make it stop.)





	a desert

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! this was written for the voltron secret santa 2017. jules, i hope you like it! thank you so much to the mods for organising this event.  
> this may be a slightly bittersweet fic, but it has a happy ending and resolutions. i hope you enjoy it!

It’s all very strange and sudden, how Keith falls in love. It's a soft sweet sorrow that tangles his tongue and chokes his voice.

You must understand. Lance is more than just beautiful. He’s unattainable in the same way that mountain flowers are — they’re far away and distant, ethereal and remote. You can only think you've imagined the splash of colour on the steep slopes, the sudden bright pink against the drying green, because by the time you’ve blinked, the roses have withered, and they're drip dripping petals that dull onto the grass.

Lance’s skin is soft. His touch is gentle, yet firm. When he sets his hand on Keith’s shoulder, his squeeze is insistent but kind. And he’s good, so good, it makes Keith’s heart swell and burst with the weight of it all. Ah, he truly can't handle this. How many lyrics were written for the masterpiece next to him, who smiled with all his teeth and always with his eyes, who leaned over him in brilliant waves and pressed kisses to his cheek when no one saw — in hallways, lights dimmed, someone else taking centre stage, just the two of them with chapped lips and cold hands holding them together, always more fond than their words make it seem.

Keith is just that much shorter than Lance and Lance’s shoulders are just that much straighter than the strong slant of his own, but Lance acts so much smaller. He lets Keith carry him on his back, leans his head on his shoulder — the weight, a boulder on Keith, but comforting — likes to brush the hair out of his face sometimes with a soft, “Keith, you should cut your hair.”

“I like it like this,” Keith runs his hands through his own hair and laughs at the pout that appears on Lance’s face. He longs to press a finger to his nose to watch him scrunch it up. “It’s better than the flat bangs I had when I first enrolled, right?”

Lance laughs. “It looked cute,” he says, his tone light enough to be joking, and is what Keith chooses to make it out to be— can’t handle what it would mean should it be otherwise.

=

Lance sometimes comes into his bed when everyone else is asleep and the castle is eerily silent, always after a battle, always after a fight. He’d slip into the white sheets next to Keith — they'd rustle like they needed to wake the dead — and they'd stare at each other. Lance would press his fingers to where Keith had gotten injured that day, one finger over his collarbones, two fingers brushing over his chest. The healing pod would fix them all, not even a mark left on the skin, and sometimes Keith missed it, missed the battle scars that should decorate Lance and him like promises of survival.

Once the silent fell, one heartbeat would pass, then two, then Keith would say, softly, as their feet start to tangle, "go to sleep, Lance.”

“Goodnight,” Lance would reply, and silence would fall on them. Keith would keep his eyes open, though, watching the pristine face before him in the semi-darkness of their room, enjoy the weight of the dip in his bed. He’d reach up tentative hands to run his fingers through his hair, listen to the man murmur beneath him and go still.

How many times has he wanted to kiss him? Ah, too many. To put it into words he’d have to count the stars in space, have to sift out each grain of sand on a beach. Maybe he should put that in a song, he thinks dreamily, then drops off to sleep — his breath syncs with the rise and fall of Lance’s, and their legs push even closer, but neither of them ever say anything when they wake up and they’re so close, Keith still smells like Lance when he goes to brush his teeth.

So what does Lance smell like? Good question. Truth is, Keith can’t really tell. Sometimes he smells like soap, sometimes like sweat, or the heady scent of a new jacket. But he always smells reassuringly the same under all that, a sweet, spicy feeling that’s undeniably Lance. It makes Keith happy to wake up in the morning — long after Lance, who would’ve been up and bustling around already — sniff his clothes and realise he carries the man with him.

=

It gets worse. Lance comes to him one night after battle— Keith is bone tired and aching, his head swims and his jaw hurts — and presents him with a little silver bracelet.

“For you,” he says, and slips it on. The band is a weight on his wrist. “A shining silver star.”

Keith holds his wrist to his heart. “Why?”

Keith remembers when all they used to do was fight. They were rival students, rival paladins, then somehow in some sudden stroke of genius or luck they’d ended up together in ways far more entangled than it’d seem — for now they were Voltron, and overwhelmingly so.

Perhaps it changed when Lance got taken for a while and Keith realised as they went for him that there was a gaping hole in his dynamic and he’d keened and yearned so much he thought he’d never make it out alive.

“Why not?" Lance laughs and bounces to his feet. “It goes with your hair. Black and silver, you know? You should wear silver more, Keith.”

Keith doesn’t ever want to take it off, but it’s impractical to fight with it on, so he keeps it in a pouch in his bag, and sometimes he takes it out and runs his hands over the cool metal. He wonders, dreams what it would be like to hold him and run his fingers across every delicate part of him, from his collarbones to his ribs, the v of his hips, the slope of his thighs.

Would he be cold, too? Would his skin shiver beneath his touch? He’d hold Lance like he was liquid silver, pliant and cool, and Keith wonders and dreams, and wakes up the next morning with the band on the floor but his heart in his hands.

=

Keith loves looking at Lance — Lance commands attention, forces you to look at him, to marvel at the grace with which he walks, at the tilt of his head and the slant of his shoulders. He soaks up the attention like a sponge in water, suns himself in their lavish affections, fights always with his heart in everything he does.

But it’s after that Keith prefers, because after battles, Lance is always the sweetest. He’s tired and soft, his voice cracks and he moves slowly, like a cat, likes to lean on them and whisper in their ears. But there are things reserved for Keith and Keith alone. Sometimes he’ll feel Lance press light kisses to the slope of his neck, like butterfly wings in a passing wind, forbidden slides of hands from shoulders to the small of backs, quiet reassurances that are more sound than they are words — these are things Keith knows only he gets to hear, and it thrills him.

When this happens Keith shivers but never searches for answers, never pushes beyond what he’s given, never wants more than he needs. But one day, when they’re alone in the white harsh light of their preparatory room, Keith finds himself reaching for the tan of Lance’s arm.

“Stay,” he whispers, loud as a roar in their room. It comes out uncertain.

Lance looks back at him. His eyes are bright. His smile is light. “Keith,” he says, and moves closer.

Keith cups his face in both hands. His skin is smooth. His lips are still bitten red from the fight. His chapstick tastes like strawberry. Keith would know, because he’s wearing it too. Keith’s eyes wander the expanses of his face, his fingers slip from his face to trail his neck and dance lightly over his collarbones, like he’s playing a piano. Lance purrs beneath him, reaches out for him, hand on neck. “Keith,” he says, looks like he would say more —

“Keith!” Shiro calls from outside, and they step away from each other. Keith’s fingers still tingle, and his breath still comes short, but when he looks at Lance, he never looks back.

=

It’s quite a life he’s doomed himself to, of always having a meal in front of him but never being able to eat. He watches as fans of Voltron gawk and fan over Lance — yes, he’s a beautiful, beautiful man, Lance is, with his soft smile and precious eyes, his gentle, calming gaze.

In the chaos that is their group, Lance stands as a conductor and a receiver. Once, when they’re all squeezing on the sofa for a movie and Keith’s legs are pressed up against Lance, he pretends to fall asleep on his shoulder so he can hold onto his arm and feel the skin all unselfishly against his hands, breathe in the scent of his shampoo, and take a moment to recenter.

Lance whispers, just once, when the movie is almost over, something that sounds like a small declaration of words, a whispered three as though testing waters, but Keith does not open his eyes, just allows the sentiment to coat him like a blanket.

=

They’re facing each other once again in their rooms. Lance's hair is wet from the shower, but his face is clean and bare. He looks extremely vulnerable, and Keith sits across him and reaches out a hand to cup his face, drags his fingers across his cheekbones and over the outline of his lips, stopping at the slant of his jaw and the uptake of his chin.

They breathe, in, and out, in sync.

Keith finally, finally breaks their sacred trust. He can’t take this anymore, like Lance is the melody of a song he can never pin down. The tune still plays hauntingly, but there’s an answer right in front of him. He can almost hear it in the background — a mountain chorus, the sound of wind through trees, and birds in places far away. Keith hyper focuses on the coarseness of Lance’s shirt beneath his palm, and he can hear the crash of waves on a beach, the promise of bursting fun, the burn of his sole against hot, hot sand. His face twists; love is cruel and intense and kind, he can’t —

He pulls Lance toward him.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, shifting closer. Their knees bump. Lance’s eyes watch him, undaunted, brave in the face of uncertainty. “How kind are you?”

Lance raises a delicate eyebrow. His lips curl. “I don’t understand,” he says, and reaches out to take his hands. Lance’s palms are getting callouses from the fighting, the veins lining his hands getting more prominent, his arms more defined. He’s losing everything that made him a mountain flower, but his delicate smile — still fragile like a rare summer’s breeze. Still loving.

Keith chews his bottom lip, might’ve worn it to shreds if Lance didn’t laugh, a short sweet sound. It’s the melody that’s been haunting Keith since he first heard it. “Keith,” Lance says, and leans forward. He presses their foreheads together. “Will you kiss me?”

Keith cracks a small smile, closes his eyes, basks in the rare feeling of being met in the middle. “If you want me to,” he says, and without much ceremony presses his lips to his. It’s nothing really special, just a touch of cold lips to chapped ones, and then they pull apart.

Lance is smiling proudly at him. His eyes are soft and mellow. “Now what’s that look for?” Keith asks, sounding almost sad, like he considers being wanted such a waste of the ability to want. He pushes closer again to press Lance further against him.

“It’s a look that says I’ve waited a long, long time for you,” is the reply that he gets, and Keith burns.

Oh, how he burns.

They kiss again. His heart rises and falls. “I’ve waited for you too,” Keith breathes, and it feels so good to give form to this sentiment, as though this was somehow worth everything and nothing at all, the culmination of everything Keith has ever neglected to say. How much he cared. How much he wanted. How his days were marked not by the slipslide passage of time in this wasteland but the number of times Lance had said his name.

“I know,” Lance breathes, worshipping him — his words, his sentiments, his feelings — and presses a kiss to his forehead. Keith takes in a breath. He feels like he’s standing next to an ocean of something infinitely deep, and he’s about to fall. “I know, Keith.”

Keith lets himself drop, but he doesn’t fall. He dips a toe into the water he sees below and finds it pleasant, and so he sinks in, feet first, floating, found, anchored. He remembers that this ocean of feeling used to be a desert — devoid of life, of kindness, and is so desperate for that to never happen again that his hands tense around Lance. He remembers the desert. He remembers it clearly.

They kiss again, and Keith holds his hand the next day when they go for breakfast, and the rest of the paladins look on in amused acceptance. Something tells Keith they’ve been wondering with him too, when his desert would flood.

"I love him,” Keith announces to the table, when Lance has stepped away for a moment.

“That's something very precious,” Hunk pours him a glass of juice. “I’m glad.”

=

It turns out, loving someone might be even harder than loving them in quiet. Keith wanted to think that his emotions would stop being so tangled — like thread around his throat — when Lance and him could openly look at each other with that tinge of fondness, but it’s infinitely more difficult.

Lance is stubborn. Keith is more stubborn. As sure as it takes centuries for water to wear down the curve of the mountain, Lance will not move for centuries till the water has left its mark. And stubbornness mixed with stubbornness is a bad idea, and as they fight constantly, maybe even more so.

There are many times when Keith looks to his desert and sees it as is, drying up or dried. His bare feet are no longer damp. In these times he wonders why, why people fight for this thing they call. love, what the point of it all was if it made the two of them so grossly unhappy. Keith doesn’t understand, you could say he’s never understood, because love was the kind of emotion that visited him if it felt like it and then left him cold and dry for months on end.

Strangely, though, for as good as Keith has always been at giving up, at leaving before it got too much — the Garrison, his old home, the trips and tricks of his city he gave up for a wall of solitude — and though he’s entertained so many times the idea of just giving Lance up and going, he’s never done it.

Instead he finds himself after another big blow-up outside Lance’s room, leaning against the door, back of his head pressed to the cool metal. He lingers, even after he knows he’s not wanted here, rubs his forehead with cold fingers and sighs.

They’d lost someone today — couldn’t protect this citizen, didn’t get there fast enough. Tensions ran high. They’d snapped. It’s common. They’ve been fighting for over four years now. Keith has memorised the tremor in Lance’s voice that meant he was barely holding it together, knows his worried face even by the tiniest pinch of skin near his eyes. Everything is simultaneously alien and familiar to him.

He waits. Longer and longer. He wonders — if he just walks away, right now. Doesn’t stay.

Then he thinks of his desert, and the oasis he’d so carefully created in it.

So he waits more, until the door slides open and he topples inside Lance’s room with an alarmed oof. The man looks at him, eyes wide. Then he says, “Keith,” and Keith is twisting about to pull him into a hug he hopes speaks more than his words ever could.

=

Keith finds something stirring beneath his ribs as he sees the snow white of Lance’s outfit, of the tuxedo he wears today, and the pale, innocent blue of his tie. His smile is wide and unabashed, his eyes are happier than Keith’s ever seen them. His feet are wet from Keith’s ocean but Keith has been drenched since he met him.

Lance is wearing a glittering silver band that flashes with his every move. People drop by to see it flicker, are entranced by the symbol of love. It is smaller than the one Keith got all those days months years ago. It is something Keith put there just an hour or so ago, something that Keith promised to, because that’s what this union is supposed to be. A sacred thing, something precious, something worth protecting, and Lance is all of the above and more. Lance might’ve been the dashing race of mountain blooms but he’s not anymore Lance has always been the ocean, gentle, roaring — and always returning, always coming back to ebb on the shore.

Lance takes his hand under the table. “You know,” he says, so softly that if Keith didn’t hang onto his every word he might've just missed it, might've let the bustle of the reception snatch away carefully chosen words. “I’m so glad I got to be Voltron with you.” His voice sounds thick. “Keith —“

Keith squeezes his hand. He doesn’t have the words to say it, never been sentimental but for his thought, never been able to tell Lance about his desert and his ocean but he knows Lance understands, even though it’s not in quite the same way. However, as he looks at as he looks at Lance with this heady blush high against his cheeks, Keith can’t help but say, "I love you.”

Lance startles — always does when Keith presented him with affection, maybe always will. He relaxes. He smiles. “Oh, Keith," he says, as though his name is something precious, and turns back to his plate. “I love you too."

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave a comment or a kudos if you enjoyed it, thank you!


End file.
